Ch.1215The Darkest Place Is Under the Lamp

# The Legacy of the Twelve Knights

The Sword of Oath is a sacred relic where Elpinel forged part of Ausrine’s remains into a sword and split his divinity into it.

It’s as if the supreme celestial god and goddess of stars detached their fingers and bestowed them upon their followers.

Naturally, its rank as a sacred relic is of the highest level.

In my memory, only Demian’s Gram and the death-imbued demonic sword wielded by the Undead Duke surpassed its rank.

However, perhaps because it was such a high-ranking sacred relic, the Sword of Oath had one fatal flaw.

The sword itself was extremely picky about choosing its master, refusing to grant even a fragment of its power to those deemed unworthy.

In fact, even Hersella couldn’t meet those qualifications and could only use Durandal as a simple true silver sword.

A divine sword that never breaks, continuously restores its master’s vitality, amplifies the power of slashes, and ultimately cuts through space itself.

Of course, Hersella wasn’t completely unqualified.

The sword rejected her because her character was such a mess, but she did fulfill the first qualification.

The only qualification shared by all Swords of Oath with their different restrictions: the bloodline restriction that one must be a descendant of the Twelve Knights who were the original owners of those swords.

Yes, to wield a Knight’s sword, one had to be a descendant of the Twelve Knights.

Without the right bloodline, you couldn’t properly use an overpowered weapon even if you obtained one. What a cruel reality.

Honestly, I don’t understand why they imposed such a condition. Did they want these national treasure-level artifacts to be used exclusively by their own families for generations?

All those descendants have either died or fallen from grace, making it difficult to find even a trace of their lineage now.

According to Lacy, Elpinel’s blessing flowing through the bloodline of the Twelve Knights awakens the sword’s power… but wouldn’t that bloodline be so diluted by now that it’s practically nonexistent?

After a full eight hundred years, unless the descendants were obsessed with preserving their bloodline through constant inbreeding, how could any significant trace of the Twelve Knights remain in their blood?

Well, actually, some of that “Elpinel’s blessing” does remain in my bloodline… but perhaps due to extreme dilution, its effect amounts to nothing more than moderate mana resistance, hardly befitting a blessing from humanity’s supreme deity.

I can resist almost all mental and binding magic, but I’m completely vulnerable to mental interference that reaches the realm of divine authority.

Considering that this is unprecedentedly powerful mana resistance by this era’s standards, other descendants might not even show any sign of the Twelve Knights’ bloodline.

No, that must certainly be the case. That’s why Lacy still can’t find them.

In other words, finding descendants of the forgotten Twelve Knights is like finding a needle in a haystack—no, a hundred times more difficult.

And finding them isn’t even the end of it.

Even if you find a descendant of the Twelve Knights, it’s meaningless without the Sword of Oath their ancestor wielded, and even with the sword, being recognized as its true master is another matter entirely.

In that sense, Nigel feeling something when she saw the newly acquired Sword of Oath couldn’t be dismissed as mere coincidence or illusion.

“Let’s check this right away. Follow me.”

That’s why, as soon as I heard those words, I abandoned all rehabilitation exercises and immediately headed to my private room with her.

And there, Nigel…

“The spear… it’s glowing?”

“Uh… ah, yes. So it is… glowing?”

As soon as she grasped the spear I handed her, the entire blade was bathed in blue-white radiance, illuminating my room as brightly as a garden at noon.

“No, not just light, but some inexplicable power endlessly…? Lord Haschal, what is this, this power…?”

I don’t know, what is that? What did you do to suddenly make it emit light? As if welcoming its true master… one who fulfills all the requirements.

Is this what they mean when suspicion becomes certainty in an instant?

At that moment, I realized—or rather, became certain of—Nigel’s identity, specifically what was contained in her bloodline.

So I had to ask. About Nigel’s family history, which I hadn’t paid attention to until now, as she apparently had no intention of discussing it.

I had three questions.

Were you perhaps not just a talented commoner from the neighborhood, but the daughter of a noble family—direct or collateral descendants of the Twelve Knights?

If so, which family and whose descendant were you?

And why had you concealed such a significant fact from me all this time?

Condensing all those questions and inquiries into one, I asked her a brief but truly meaningful question.

“Nigel, this might seem sudden, but… were you an orphan by any chance?”

“What…?! No, what are you…?”

Nigel asked back with a face that genuinely seemed not to understand. She didn’t seem to grasp the intention behind my question.

…Did I condense it too much?

Judging by her half-bewildered, half-disgruntled expression, she seemed to have misunderstood my intent.

I simply asked if she was an orphan because if she had no parents—or rather, didn’t know who they were—it would answer all my questions.

If she were an orphan, she wouldn’t know her parents and thus wouldn’t know about her bloodline, so naturally, she couldn’t have told me about it.

In other words, she hadn’t deceived me or hidden secrets; she herself didn’t know her own identity.

“I’m… not an orphan. Well, I wasn’t. At least.”

But Nigel wasn’t an orphan.

“You weren’t an orphan…? Then what did your parents do?”

That changes things… I need to hear the details first.

Seeing her make a subtle expression that was difficult to explain when asked about her parents, it seemed there was some special backstory related to her family.

“Well, that’s… *sigh*…”

Hesitating and slightly avoiding my gaze as if uncomfortable answering, Nigel let out a long sigh as if making some kind of resolution.

What is it, really?

Is her mother actually the same person as her aunt? Or is her mother the same person as her older sister?

Surely it’s not something that crazy…?

“It’s a long story if I explain, but would that be alright?”

“Well… I’m fine with it. Time is all I have right now.”

I slumped down on the leather sofa in front of a small table and offered Nigel the seat opposite, preparing myself mentally to listen to her story.

—-

“Do you know of a family called… Winlandria?”

Winlandria.

After moistening her throat with the tea I had warmed for her, Nigel paused briefly before mentioning that name.

“Winlandria? Well… ah, wait, I think I’ve heard that somewhere…”

When was that? If it’s related to the Twelve Knights as I suspect, perhaps Leopold or Lacy mentioned it…

– Most nobles who actively participated in Isabella’s rebellion were exterminated. Elpad, Milord, Winlandria… there were more than I expected.

– I’ve narrowed down the noble families suspected to be descendants… but most are already extinct. Even the Winlandria family, which had the highest possibility, was entirely executed except for a son who disappeared before that…

Ah, I remember now.

A noble family that Lacy suspected to be descendants of the Twelve Knights. They joined Ernst’s faction during Isabella’s rebellion and were exterminated for treason, weren’t they?

The head of the family and his wife, as well as their relatives, were all executed, and their only child, a son named Nigelus, had already disappeared several years before that.

But why is that name coming up now? Could it be that Nigel was actually from that Winlandria family?

Since the family head only had one son, perhaps from a collateral branch?

“Um… isn’t that the family that was ruined in the imperial civil war? The one that actively supported Ernst’s rebellion and was excluded from amnesty…”

“…Yes. That traitor family is correct.”

Nigel slightly bowed her head and blushed, answering in a shrinking voice as if embarrassed.

Well… it is embarrassing.

Even I had laughed for quite a while at how the descendants of the Twelve Knights had disgraced themselves by licking a witch’s toes before dying.

I’d said they’d probably get grabbed by the collar and beaten to death a second time by their ancestors in the afterlife, rather than resting in peace.

“Ah, so that’s why you couldn’t tell me until now? Because you’re related to those traitors?”

Well, if that’s the case, it certainly would have been difficult for Nigel to reveal. I don’t particularly care though.

In fact, Leopold probably wouldn’t care much at this point either.

If people had to be executed just for being related to rebels, even though they didn’t participate in the rebellion themselves, he would have first beheaded Leonore and displayed her head in the middle of the square.

Leopold executed the rebellious nobles en masse not out of hatred or anger, but because it was beneficial to him.

He confiscated the rebels’ property and exterminated their families to elevate the emperor’s authority, which had been diminished by the civil war, and to prepare rewards for his subordinates.

But Isabella’s death was already several years ago, so he had already gained all the benefits he could from that incident.

At this point, making an issue of Nigel’s bloodline as a relative of rebels would bring him no benefit and only massive losses.

“Um… that’s… not a relative… but, a direct descendant.”

“…What?”

Wait, not a relative?

Nigel bowed her head even deeper and continued in a voice that suggested she was dying of embarrassment.

She said she wasn’t just a relative of the Winlandria family, but the only direct child of the executed family head.

Her voice sounded like someone confessing to a close friend that her parents were actually fake news broadcasters who appeared on 9 o’clock crime news.

…But does that make sense?

“Um… really? Wait a minute. That’s strange. From what I heard, the family head only had one child, a missing son named Nigelus or something…”

“…I am that Nigelus. I didn’t go missing; I left the family.”

“What…?”

What is she saying? Nigel, were you actually a man?

No, that’s impossible. How many times have we bathed together? How could I mistake that? It doesn’t make sense.

She definitely didn’t have a male body, nor did she have anything extra that shouldn’t be on a female body, and I clearly saw with my own eyes that nothing was there.

Nigel was definitely a woman. At least physically.

If so, there were only two possibilities: either she had possessed someone else’s body like me, or…

“Nigel, you…”

“Yes, that’s right. When I was young, my parents—”

“Cut and pierced it? With some kind of magic?”

The only possibility was that magic, a divine miracle, or something similar had “operated” on her, changing her from male to female.

“Disguised me as my brother who died in an accident… What? Cut what exactly… Oh.”

Of course, that was a completely deranged misunderstanding.

“No, no, that’s impossible! C-cut and pierce? What on earth are you saying?!”

“Um… sorry.”

All I could do was sincerely apologize, bowing my head and saying I was sorry for my crazy words, as Nigel shouted with her face turning bright red from shock and embarrassment.